Five Stages
by Anime Girl23
Summary: As it turned out, the stages of grief applied just as effectively to losing a sense as it did to losing a person. Finn reflects on the way his and Puck's lives and relationship have changed since the accident that took Puck's sight. Finn/Puck slash


Disclaimer: Glee doesn't belong to me.

Five Stages  
One-shot

Humans adapt. It was a necessity of life. Adapt or you die. It's never easy, though. Not when you have to adapt because your life has been changed so completely that you have to learn how to live all over again.

That was what happened after Puck's accident. Finn was never too sure what had happened. All he knew was that he got a call to come to the hospital and that Puck had been found unconscious. Scans had shown injuries that looked like Puck had fallen, probably from one of the higher walls at the college. He had always liked climbing up there and walking on the ledge, said that it made it easier to avoid people and he enjoyed when they looked at him like he was nuts. He did it when they were around and when he was alone, just because.

Puck had been a fan of heights from the day they met. Where Finn had been afraid of them, Puck embraced it, climbing as high as he could wherever they were. Trees and jungle gyms when they were kids. Garages and houses when they were teenagers. He'd fallen a thousand times and ended up in enough casts to make Finn wonder how he didn't have pins holding his bones together, but he always got right back up.

His fiancé was a stubborn man.

This time, though, it wasn't a joke. The cast would come off Puck's arm in a few months, but he'd never climb that high again. There wasn't a point.

Why look down when all you could see was blackness?

The doctors blamed the head injury. Said there had been damage to some part of his brain that controlled his sight and, at first, Finn had just thought Puck would need stronger glasses or something. His eyes—as much as Finn loved them and, yeah, he knew that made him a chick—had always been weak. He'd gotten it from his mom and…

Finn turned his eyes towards Puck, but all he saw were sightless, hazel eyes staring back at him. It was unnerving and he knew it would be for a long time. Seeing Puck's stare and knowing he wasn't actually seeing him.

It wasn't fair.

Puck didn't say anything for a long time after the doctor told him it was permanent. He just sat there, like he was trying to will his vision back when he knew it was no use. You couldn't make yourself see and he couldn't take the blindness away.

Blind.

Puck was blind.

The thought came to Finn, using that word for the first time and he clutched at his fiancé's hand. "Puck…"

"Don't."

Bringing Puck home was hard. Their apartment wasn't big and with Finn mostly doing online classes that semester, he'd taken to changing the place around constantly. It kept him busy and he was always so sure that the next design would be the one that gave them the most space.

He couldn't do that now, though. Puck needed familiarity as he grew accustomed to the walking stick and moving around on his own and he couldn't do that if their narrow walking spaces changed every other day.

Finn forgot once in the early days. He'd been folding the laundry that had piled up during Puck's time in the hospital and he was always better when he could spread out. He'd pulled chairs closer to him, making piles and separating everything.

Puck fell over a chair, jabbing himself in the gut with his walking stick as he toppled to the floor, and that had been the breaking point. The tears came and there was something too haunting about blind eyes managing to look that broken. In the past, if Puck ever cried, his eyes would search for Finn until they found him. They did that now, but they couldn't stop. There was nothing to find. Nothing but blackness and Finn choked back a sob of his own as he pulled Puck against him.

"I can't see…"

"I'm sorry…"

As it turned out, the stages of grief applied just as effectively to losing a sense as it did to losing a person.

Denial and Isolation. Puck had never been able to deny that he was blind, but he spent the first few months hiding himself away and denying that it was permanent. Every time Finn had tried to bring up the therapist or moving into a bigger place so that he could move comfortably, Puck had snapped at him that it wasn't forever and that they'd get back to normal.

Anger. Four months in and Puck knew his sight wasn't coming back. He threw his folded walking stick so hard that it knocked a picture of them off the wall. Finn wanted to call it lucky aim that he'd managed to hit anything, but he couldn't help feeling like it was an omen of things to come.

Bargaining. Puck at the doctors, begging and pleading that they find some procedure to bring his sight back. A surgery. A diet change. Maybe another knock to the head. He had been willing to do anything—to _give_ anything—to see again, but the doctors couldn't do anything for him.

Depression. The crying. Refusing to get out of bed, let alone the apartment. There had been a few months that Finn had honestly been scared that he'd come home from work one day and Puck would have done something stupid. Felt their relationship falling apart and he couldn't do anything to fix it. Puck wouldn't even let him hold him, like he was a reminder of something he'd never see again.

Acceptance. It took a year, but Puck smiled one morning. It was weak and he was still struggling, but he got out of bed, felt along the nightstand until he found his walking stick, and he learned to live. He learned to take what he'd been given and _deal_. He learned how to hold the stick right and made himself remember. Learned to walk around the apartment until they finally agreed that it was time to move. He found a support group. _They_ fixed their relationship. Where it had almost been completely broken… They were fixing it.

Finn watched Puck type away on his laptop, a little fascinated at how easily it all came to him. The headphones on Puck's head were reading back everything he was typing and, yeah, he'd proofread it later for the guy just to be sure, but Puck had learned. Two years after his accident and one year into grad school and he was kind of kicking ass. The blind guy that was dominating the computer science major.

Not that it was easy. Puck had fought like hell to get where he was and he was lucky that he had already been in the major when he got hurt. He didn't have to settle for some other dream, no matter how much his advisers had tried to urge him to look elsewhere. He didn't. He graduated his undergrad with full honors before he made it into grad school, juggling classes alongside his day job and his internship.

He was thriving in it and even if all of that crap went right over Finn's head, it made his husband happy. People bitched sometimes, sure, said that Puck's equipment gave him an advantage somehow, but he shut them down. Gave them his headphones and told them to close their eyes. Do what he did in the same timeframe he did it in and _then_ tell him he had it easy.

They never bothered him after that.

Finn glanced at the clock and pushed himself to his feet. "Babe, you gotta get to campus. Don't you have a class?"

"Just a guest lecture," Puck said, shrugging like it didn't matter as he powered down his stuff. He shoved it into his bag, fingers feeling carefully to make sure everything was secure before he grabbed his walking stick off the desk. "You driving? I probably shouldn't."

Finn cracked a smile. "What? You been drinking?" Puck was getting better about the situation and, yeah, he still had days where he mourned the way things had been before, but he could joke about it now. He could talk about being blind and he sounded like he was okay with it. Maybe not all the time, but most of it.

Dealing.

Adjusting.

Finn moved over to Puck's side, offering his husband his elbow to guide him. Their system. It was how they worked, falling into line with each other so easily that Finn sometimes forgot that Puck couldn't see him. He could hear him, recognize his steps so distinctly that he knew the different skid and tap of every shoe in the closet.

His own personal superhero.

It was kind of badass, he thought. Not that he should have expected anything less. Before Puck lost his sight, they'd made jokes that he was dating Batman. Now, he was married to Daredevil.

…Or their lovechild.

Either way, it was pretty cool.

The End


End file.
